The Government Must Act Now to Address Tijuana River Pollution

Rosario Nozagaray is the Marine Debris manager of WILDCOAST, an international organization that conserves coastal and marine ecosystems and addresses climate change through natural solutions. Fay Crevoshay is the senior director of communications and policy of WILDCOAST. Serge Dedina is the executive director of WILDCOAST and the former Mayor of Imperial Beach.

Tijuana’s Los Laureles Canyon, on the highway to Playas de Tijuana, is the kind of place where stereotypes about impoverished colonias on the U.S.-Mexico border ring true. More than 50,000 people live crammed into a narrow canyon in everything from concrete houses to plywood shacks buttressed by old tires to stop mudslides. Illegal pig and dairy farms operate clandestinely in offshoots of the canyon. Even for us, with decades working in Tijuana’s most remote and dangerous neighborhoods, there are certain parts of Los Laureles that due to security concerns, are off limits. 

Sewage, trash, waste tires (many that originate from California) and toxic waste flow down the concrete storm drain in the middle of Los Laureles into Border Field State Park on the U.S. side of the border. Over the years pollution from Los Laureles has been a major cause of pollution-related beach closures from Imperial Beach to Coronado. Uncollected refuse in the Tijuana River Valley is also a vector for disease, rats, and gases that contribute to climate change. 

All of these challenges make it imperative to clean up Los Laureles, a major sending area of pollution into the Tijuana Estuary and border beaches. Pollution in the Tijuana River Valley on both sides of the border and especially in Los Laureles is persistent and has worsened over the years. Wastewater, toxic waste and garbage continue to flow unchecked through streams and canals, affecting both human health and local ecosystems, parks, and wildlife. 

This runoff, as documented by researchers at San Diego State University and UC San Diego, have become infection hotspots and potential sources of illnesses, such as respiratory problems, gastrointestinal conditions, and skin infections, among other public health impacts. Border Patrol agents and U.S. Navy SEALs, frontline U.S. national and border security personnel, are especially at risk from Tijuana River Valley pollution. 

That is why in 2020, during the height of the pandemic, WILDCOAST, thanks to the generous support of the Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory at UC Santa Barbara, built a trash detention boom in the middle of Los Laureles. Our effort was part of a global movement, the Clean Currents Coalition, to leverage funds and entrepreneurship to find solutions around the world to the plastic waste crisis enveloping the world’s oceans 

We launched our project due to our dismay about how long it has taken federal agencies in both Mexico and the U.S. to solve the cross border pollution crisis. Government agencies have to change the way they do business when it comes to solving this toxic crisis so that the priority is on building solutions that completely stop pollution rather than holding meetings and sanctioning never-ending studies. 

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) planning process in the U.S. to develop a comprehensive solution to the sewage crisis has taken years and nothing has been built so far. In Mexico, cost effective solutions, especially water-reuse, have been discarded in favor of traditional sewage treatment plants like the Mexican military’s rehabilitation of the San Antonio de los Buenos plant that will be under capacity the minute it goes on line (forecast for later this year). 

In contrast, over the past five years, our mostly privately financed trash booms (we received one grant from NOAA), were  built with minimal government bureaucracy at a fraction of the cost of what California spent to build one on the U.S. side of the border ($200,000 vs. $4.7 million) and  captured hundreds of thousands of pounds of trash that would have ended in the Tijuana River and in our oceans. In Tijuana, through community clean-up events, we invite residents to help clear garbage from streams and canals and learn about the importance of reusing and recycling materials. Working as a team with over 154 people at 60 plastic recovery points throughout Tijuana has made it possible for more individuals to realize that their efforts can make a difference. 

We even built a children’s park out of material we collected from the canyon, cleaned up, and re-purposed for a playground. More recently in Cañón del Pato, a tributary of Smuggler’s Gulch in the United States, we built another trash boom out of confiscated fishing nets once used to illegally harvest endangered totoaba in the Gulf of California. Our entrepreneurial project illustrates that you can make a difference with a lot of sweat equity and minimal bureaucracy in what is arguably the toughest place to work on the U.S.-Mexico border. 

The pollution crisis in Tijuana is worse than ever. That is why we need strong leadership and committed involvement from officials in Mexico and the U.S. to quickly and cost-effectively implement solutions. Our struggling communities and the beautiful beaches we have been deprived of, deserve better.